photo(1).jpgphoto(2).jpg

Right then guys and gals i'd like to start this review by stating that Roman of HM Machines has THE best customer service i have ever come across in this industry! I placed my order and within a few days i received a phone call from him (which in itself was very unexpected) telling me he'd done a small run of 5 "naked" La Santamarias and would i be interested in 1! You bet your ass i was interested! He then asked me what my t-shirt size was so he could send me 1. This was at 4pm, he then said he was about to send the machine and that i should expect it the next day! Not only was he very easy to deal with but he was right about the delivery too, the next day at 10am i received my parcel! From Spain to the UK in less than 18 hours! That's pretty incredible!

The machine came in a nice HM Machine box, was snuggly fitted in cut foam and came with a small tube of superlube and all the relevant info on how best to run the machine. Oh and a swanky free t-shirt. At this point i was grinning from ear to ear and hadn't even switched the machine on yet!

So how does it work? Pretty bloody well to be fair! It's virtually silent at 6v and the linear action is perfect. I love the tube vice and the polished coin screw is a nice added extra. The machine is on the weighty side probably similar to a vivace, maybe slightly lighter, but the balance reduces the weight beautifully. In fact that's not where the Vivace similarities end. It runs in a very similar fashion, the strong silent type and has a return spring so the needle always stops inside the tip. I used it for 4 hours earlier and although it did get a little warm it performed very well. I didn't use all of the available stroke, i backed the 9mg up a bit like i do with all of my machines. Very subtle dusty transistions were a joy to do and i'm looking forward to exploring this gorgeous thing more in the next few days!

Congrats Roman for your service and your machine building skills.